International Journal for Quality Research

14

Authors: Dominik Zimon

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to ask one question. How the implementation of the requirements of ISO 9001 system affects the costs of running the business? Design/methodology/approach – The research covered time from 2006 to 2011 and was an attempt to assess the impact of the maintenance of the ISO 9001 Quality Management System on the costs of small and medium sized business organizations. The main objective was the selection of right research subjects that would allow the formulation of the most reliable and statistically valid conclusions. For this purpose we obtained permissions to conduct research in organizations characterized by comparable futures such as size, industry, type of business and strategy. Findings – The study shows that the costs associated with the implementation and maintenance of the Quality Management System standard is still too high, and effectively discourages representatives of small and medium-sized commercial organizations from implementing ISO 9001 system.

14

Authors: Alexandra Simon, Piotr Kafel, Pawel Nowicki, Marti Casadesus

The aim of this paper is to analyze the key features of an effective complaint management process as well as to explore whether these systems are formally constituted in terms of standards or other models for complaints management. We use four case studies of spa organizations from Spain. The case studies illustrate the organizations’ approach to managing complaints and customer satisfaction effectively. The results of this exploratory study show that all four organizations have some mechanisms implemented to handle complaints although different levels of formalization have been achieved. The analysis unveils some common difficulties and key success factors of implementing a complaints handling system. The results of this paper suggest that managers should prioritize managing customer complaints effectively in order to enhance their chances of meeting customer expectations. This strategy can result into turning customer complaints to customer satisfaction, especially when the organization views complaints as an opportunity to improve.

16

Authors: Ana Stranjancevic, Iva Bulatovic

One of the greatest challenges for stakeholders is to ensure customer satisfaction, especially in service industries such as tourism and hospitality. The aim of this paper is to show that restaurant guest satisfaction depends on numerous factors as well as to show the connection between satisfaction and loyalty. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are excellent indicators of service quality. For the purpose of this paper, empirical survey was conducted and the results of the research were analyzed by statistical method. Factors which affect customer satisfaction are: kind staff, professionalism, speed of service, food quality, ambience and comfort. This implicates a special need for the introduction of strong Human Resource Management, food safety standards (e.g. HACCP) and effective space planning. The study implies that the care for quality of products and services is necessary at all levels and that it is impossible to ensure the customer satisfaction or create customer loyalty without strong management system (including space projecting) and without controlling it.

22

Authors: Rajesh Kumar Jain, Yogesh Doshit, Tripura Sundari Joshi

Indian blood transfusion service industry is not able to meet the needs of the society and is still reliant, at least partially, on professional donors. Hence, major focus has to be on encouraging voluntary donors and increasing the supply. To this end, the quality of blood collection service needs to be assuring, hygienic and efficient in order to attract the potential donors. Authors believe the industry being not competitive, lacks incentives to be modern, resulting in fear psychosis, low supply, diseconomies of scale and higher cost of production. The government, by forcing and ensuring highest standards, can help achieve greater voluntary donation resulting in benefits to the industry and to the recipients. The objective of the study is to measure the quality of service provided by the blood banks to the donors of the blood. The research is directed at measuring the costumers’ perception of service quality, relative importance of its dimensions and identifying the best practices applicable for blood banks. The research is empirical in nature and is based on administering the modified SERVQUAL instruments on more than 300 blood donors. Using statistical analysis, the paper evaluates the processes at different blood banks.

24

Authors: Dinh Tran Ngoc Huy

After the recent global crisis, corporate scandals and bankruptcy in US and Europe, there is some certain evidence on weak corporate governance, risk management and audit system. The 2009 India Code of Corporate Governance also revealed that during the crisis time, there are certain weaknesses although corporate structure is fairly durable. Hence, this paper chooses a different analytical approach and among its aims is to give some systematic opinions. First, it classifies limited South Asian representative corporate governance (CG) standards into two (2) groups: India and Malaysia latest CG principles covered in group 1 and, group 2, including corporate governance principle from Thailand and Indonesia, so-called relative good CG group, while it uses ACCA and OECD and ICGN principles as reference. Second, it, through analysis, identifies differences and advantages between above set of standards which are and have been used as reference principles for many relevant organizations. Third, it establishes a selected comparative set of standards for South Asian representative corporate governance system in accordance to international standards. Last but not least, this paper covers some ideas and policy suggestions.

12

Authors: Yurij Vasilkov, Ludmila Gushina

The work reviews the approach to the management of an organization taking into account internal risks caused by management decisions. Quantitative evaluations of individual risks, integrated risks, and the algorithm of the internal risks management are also reviewed.

14

Authors: Alexander Tyurikov

This article is devoted to evaluation of the quality and efficiency of state and municipal management, training of chiefs in Russia. Particular attention is given to research the concepts of authority quality, quality and efficiency of governance.

14

Authors: Artemy Varshapetian, Elena Semenova

For manufacturing companies to succeed in today's unstable economic environment, it is necessary to restructure the main components of its activities: designing innovative product, production using modern reconfigurable manufacturing systems, a business model that takes into account the global strategy and management methods using modern management models and tools. The first three components are discussed in numerous publications, for example, (Koren, 2010) and is therefore not considered in the article. A large number of publications devoted to the methods and tools of production management, for example (Halevi, 2007). On the basis of what was said in the article discusses the possibility of the integration of only three methods have received in recent years, the most widely used, namely: Six Sigma method - SS (George et al., 2005) and supplements its-Design for six sigm? - DFSS (Taguchi, 2003); Lean production transformed with the development to the "Lean management" and further to the "Lean thinking" - Lean (Hirano et al., 2006); Theory of Constraints, developed E.Goldratt - TOC (Dettmer, 2001). The article investigates some aspects of this integration: applications in diverse fields, positive features, changes in management structure, etc.

18

Authors: Nina Aniskina

The paper is devoted to the process of formation of competences professional, social, and personal) as a component of the process of continuing adult education. The quality assurance model for this process is presented considering the international and Russian experience.

20

Authors: Helen Breslav

The monitoring of an independent assessment and certification of qualifications held by the Pastukhov Academy in the framework of the project of Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Science and Education (Rosobrnadzor) in the fall 2014 gave paradoxical results. On the one hand, the situation in the sphere of the independent assessment must be judged as barely satisfactory: certification bodies are poorly represented online, their number is insufficient, information is not enough, and plans are incorrect, best practices are also not enough. On the other hand, respondents welcomed development of the system of independent assessment. In the future, they expect to get significant benefits both for society as a whole and for individual professionals. The author proposes the ways to improve the situation and makes recommendations not only to bodies for the independent assessment and certification of qualifications, but also to other interested parties, in particular, professional associations and authorities in the field of education. The process of development of professional standards and participation in this process by various stakeholders are also considered.

20

Authors: Ershova Elena Vladimirovna

This article reviews the issues associated with development of an integrated quality management system and its implementation into a galenical pharmaceutical company. Recently, the Russian pharmaceutical industry has been developing extensively: pharmaceutical clusters are being formed, new and innovative technologies are being developed. For the enterprises producing galenical pharmaceutical products, which feature low prices and a high level of competition, development and implementation of management systems is a way to prove their competitiveness. The purpose of this article is to review the architecture and the key elements of integrated management systems for pharmaceutical enterprises, develop an integrated management system in terms of the upcoming revision of ISO 9001:2015, as well as to describe the benefits of implementation of such systems. The presented approach is the result of an educational project implemented within the framework of the MBA programme in "Master of Business Administration (MBA)" in the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Continuing Professional Education Pastukhov State Academy of Industrial Management.

10

Authors: Massimo Andretta, Floriana Coppola, Ana Pavlovic

In recent years, the study of the indoor microclimate has assumed increasing importance, especially for the problems associated with the conservation of the cultural heritage housed in museums, galleries and libraries. In this paper, we describe the most important national standards relative to the procedures for the measurements and the analysis of the environmental conditions regarding the preservation of the works of art. These methods are related to the measurement techniques, which have to be applied for monitoring and analyzing the microclimatic conditions of museums, galleries and archives; these norms report, also, the threshold reference values for optimal climatic conditions. Furthermore, we present some considerations on the importance and on the foundations of the proposed scientific/methodological approaches. Finally, we have done a reasoned analysis on some reference values reported by the international regulations with some considerations on the possible chemical/physical mechanisms of degradation of the valuable objects.

12

Authors: Zuzana Kapsdorferova, Maria Kadlecikova, Emilia Svitova

Current global trends force businesses to enhance their competitiveness via quality, innovations, leaning of production processes and shortening of production cycles, development of employees and satisfying of customer's needs. At the same time, the society demands from entities more emphasis on sustainable development, environmental protection, social responsibility and on other social aspects of the business. Many firms seek the ways how to master such important demands and gain the recognition on the market. One of the avenues how to achieve planned results resides in implementation of the Total Quality Management systems, which also provide grounds for reaching a status of reliable business partner. Presented research paper puts an emphasis on execution of research in order to find out about the situation with the status of implementation of the quality managerial systems in Slovak businesses as well as to recognize reasons and contributions of usage of these systems in their activities.

14

Authors: Yerriswamy Wooluru, D.R. Swamy, P. Nagesh

Process Capability Indices (PCI) has been widely used as a means of summarizing process performance relative to set of specification limits. The proper use of process capability indices are based on some assumptions which may not be true always. Therefore, sometime whether the process capability indices can truly reflect the performance of a process is questionable. Most of PCIs, including Cp, Cpk, Cpm and Cpmk, neglect the changes in the shape of the distribution, which is an important indicator of problems in skewness-prone processes. Wright proposed a process capability index 'Cs' to detect shape changes in a process due to skewness by incorporating a penalty for skewness. In this paper, the effect of skewness on assessment of accuracy of Wright's capability index Cs is studied and comparison is made with Cp, Cpk, Cpm and Cpmk indices when the distribution of the quality characteristic (spring force) considered is skewed slightly. This paper also discusses how modelling the non normal data using statistical software and results were compared with other methods.

14

Authors: Nebojsa Pavlovic

This work investigates authentic leadership models in the organizational culture of a school. The aim of this quantitative research is to define the factors of authentic leadership in educational institutions in order to provide answers to the questions related to the existence of specific authentic leadership in a school. The sample included 227 randomly selected directors of secondary and primary schools in the former Yugoslav republics: Serbia, Montenegro, and the Republic Srpska. The research included the use of an ALQ questionnaire for the estimation of leadership behavior. The components of authentic leadership are defined using factor analysis and other statistics techniques. The findings developed in this research indicated the fact that directors in educational institutions have a specific authentic leadership style. We suggest the concept of authentic leadership based on the four following factors: Communication-conformist, self-consciousness, self-discovery, and self-concept. Supporting these factors provides the directors with the possibility of obtaining a high level of authentic leadership.

16

Authors: Sergey Trapitsin, Olga Krokinskaya, Victor Timchenko

The article touches on the issue of meeting the students' educational needs as a crucial point in the quality of education improvement. The main consumers of educational services are students whose perceptions of the educational quality is analyzed. According to the research the primary attention of the administration have be paid to the dissatisfaction of the consumer and only then to ensure the satisfaction. The focus on the factors causing negative evaluation and dissatisfaction of students, using tactics quick fix ("quick patch") is recommended.

22

Authors: Sabahudin Jasarevic, Safet Brdarevic, Mustafa Imamovic, Magdalena Diering

There are number of obstacles on a challenging road to the effectiveness and business and organizational excellence. One of the most difficult ones is human (not) understanding of the constant flux of change. Such is the case when it comes to development of quality management system. Will the quality be either a problem or resource of some organization depends above all on the basic standpoint towards quality that exists in the organization. Many authors underline that implementation of quality management system and obtaining ISO 9000 certificate is not an easy task, but also emphasize that its maintenance and improvement is much more difficult task. The greatest number of problems that occur during the realization of project of quality management system as well as its improvement are the result of misunderstanding of the essence of standard, that is its principles. On of these principles is Leadership too, that is the role of Top Management. Managers at the highest levels are certainly the most responsible for establishing the vision and guiding organization in all business aspects, including Quality Management and Quality Management System. This work presents results of research conducted on the top management in 204 organizations with introduced quality system. Results show views of top management about the effects of introduced quality system as well as about future steps in terms of improving the same.

10

Authors: Jorge Moutinho, Fernanda Oliveira

This lecture focuses on the complexity to manage and optimize maintenance processes, operations and service tasks to equipments and systems installed at customer sites. Different locations, access and working environment may compromise any standardization of setup's and operations. Multi-site teams based on geographic strategic locations, adds complexity to trainning, communication, supervising and monitoring processes. Logistics and information systems assume relevant rolls to consolidate global performance. Beside efficiency, effectiveness productivity and flexibility, field teams need skills on autonomy responsibility and proactivity. This lecture also explores the needed adaptation of most part of available literature, normally based on production sites, as also of Lean- Kaizen principles to the fact that services can not be stocked, quality is normally more difficult to measure and customer is normally present when and where service is produced.

12

Authors: Sivasangari Subramaniam, Sotheenathan Krishinan, Revathy U. Thandapani, Hans Van Rostenberghe, Azriani Berahim

In the nursing profession, EBP makes a positive contribution to healthcare outcomes, care delivery, clinical teaching and research. The research objective was to determine the nurses' knowledge, attitude, practice towards EBP and barriers to use EBP in four (4) Government Hospitals in Malaysia, Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Hospital Pulau Pinang (HPP), Hospital Sultan Abdul Halim (HSAH) and Hospital Seberang Jaya (HSJ). A cross-sectional study was conducted from January until December 2012 among (n=600) nurses working in all disciplines, on shift or day time duties in four selected hospitals. The questionnaire was adapted from a Singapore study (Majid, 2011). Results showed that among the nurses working in 4 different Malaysian hospitals, close to fifty percent (53 %) knew what the evidence based practice meant. The items assessing the attitude showed a large number nurses responding that they did neither agree nor disagree with statements provided. The majority of the remaining nurses tended to show a rather positive attitude except when asked about how the workload interfered with their EBP practice. The practice level of EBP scored a mean of more than 3 out of maximal five for most items. Most nurses recognized there were many barriers to EBP in their working place. In conclusion, this study may have helped to increase our understanding of knowledge, attitudes, practice and barriers towards to use of EBP to the utilization of research by nurses through an exploration of perceived barriers and facilitators on the part of nurses.

14

Authors: Carlos A. Costa, João Mendonça da Silva, António Monteiro, Ana Isabel Filipe

The main features of most components consist of simple basic functional geometries: planes, cylinders, spheres and cones. Shape and position recognition of these geometries is essential for dimensional characterization of components, and represent an important contribution in the life cycle of the product, concerning in particular the manufacturing and inspection processes of the final product. This work aims to establish an algorithm to automatically recognize such geometries, without operator intervention. Using differential geometry large volumes of data can be treated and the basic functional geometries to be dealt recognized. The original data can be obtained by rapid acquisition methods, such as 3D survey or photography, and then converted into Cartesian coordinates. The satisfaction of intrinsic decision conditions allows different geometries to be fast identified, without operator intervention. Since inspection is generally a time consuming task, this method reduces operator intervention in the process. The algorithm was first tested using geometric data generated in MATLAB and then through a set of data points acquired by measuring with a coordinate measuring machine and a 3D scan on real physical surfaces. Comparison time spent in measuring is presented to show the advantage of the method. The results validated the suitability and potential of the algorithm hereby proposed.

16

Authors: Paulo Ávila, Alzira Mota, Goran Putnik, Lino Costa, António Pires, João Bastos, M. M. Cruz-Cunha

The problem of selecting suppliers/partners is a crucial and important part in the process of decision making for companies that intend to perform competitively in their area of activity. The selection of supplier/partner is a time and resource-consuming task that involves data collection and a careful analysis of the factors that can positively or negatively influence the choice. Nevertheless it is a critical process that affects significantly the operational performance of each company. In this work, trough the literature review, there were identified five broad suppliers selection criteria: Quality, Financial, Synergies, Cost, and Production System. Within these criteria, it was also included five sub-criteria. Thereafter, a survey was elaborated and companies were contacted in order to answer which factors have more relevance in their decisions to choose the suppliers. Interpreted the results and processed the data, it was adopted a model of linear weighting to reflect the importance of each factor. The model has a hierarchical structure and can be applied with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method or Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART). The result of the research undertaken by the authors is a reference model that represents a decision making support for the suppliers/partners selection process.

18

Authors: Dorota Stadnicka, Katarzyna Antosz

Continuous improvement is indispensable for ensuring the company's development and its survival on the constantly changing global market. Continuous improvement is particularly important in the quality and production management systems. A company should deliver a product compliant with a client's requirements in a specified time and at an appropriate price. That is why, continuous improvement refers to different areas of an organization's functioning and it is an integral part of Lean Manufacturing. This article presents the results of the study conducted in production enterprises on a limited area. The aim of the study was the assessment of the implementation of continuous improvement in Lean Manufacturing, and, in particular, employees' involvement in the problem identification and in reporting improvements as well as the way of motivating employees to involve themselves. The authors also tried to identify the factors influencing the elements of a continuous improvement system.

18

Authors: Edison Cesar de Faria Nogueira, Osvaldo Luiz Gonçalves Quelhas, Sérgio L. B. França, Marcelo Jasmim Meiriño, Luiz Alexandre Mosca Cunha

This article presents a case study related to the implementation of a Work Safety Program in a chemical industry, based on the Process Safety Program, PSP, of a huge energy company. The research was applied, exploratory, qualitative and with and data collection method through documentary and bibliographical research. There will be presented the main practices adopted in order to make the Safety Program a reality inside a chemical industry, its results and contributions for its better development. This paper proposes the implementation of a Safety Program must be preceded by a diagnosis of occupational safety and health management system and with constant critical analysis in order to make the necessary adjustments.